No Sanctuaries
by Urbia
Summary: All Kagami needed was a push, and Akabane is there to give it to him. Kagami then tugs at Himiko's bonds. This is a story about breaking free. Chapter 3 uploaded. Rating changed for threesome smut.
1. Outside the Lens

The sun lanced off the chrome curve and struck the back of Akabane's retina. It was the first thing he saw that morning. No amount of irritated blinking would dislodge that slash of red branded behind his eyes, one which offered a plethora of violent ideas. He stifled a yawn, jaw cracking in the process. His eyes focused. Inches before his nose stirred the frayed ends of ash blonde hair, swaying to the push and pull of his breath. Peeping between the strands near the base of a creamy slope, Kagami's earring shone like a spaceship crashed in a wheat field, madly sending emergency signals to the cosmos floating above the jagged black spires of the City. Akabane secretly hated that thing. Slowly, deliberately, he reached his hand toward the sleeping Babylonian's jugular, on which sat the abomination of a fashion statement. He flicked the ornament. It slid over the curve that joined Kagami's neck and shoulder, jerking the earlobe to which its chain attached.

With a sigh, Kagami shifted his weight. Dawn drew out the grey shadows between his lean, rippling muscles, and reflected off the smooth white scars from past battles. Akabane had to hand it to Babylon City's latest biotechnology. Kagami produced very little keloid. Akabane remembered that long back wound that once poured blood over his gloved hand. After healing, it taunted him in the form of a two inch-long line that barely caught the light, while Akabane's old scars striped his body. Soon it would vanish completely.

Akabane waited, but Kagami didn't wake up.

Through the shrubs, bubblegum pink appeared in the cracks between pruned green leaves. A little girl in a billowing dress ran through the park, watched over by a mother intent on instilling early-rising habits. Her turquoise eyes spanned wide towards a butterfly, and little legs brought them closer. Tiny lips moved excitedly, but no sound rivaled the tranquil rhythm of Kagami's breathing. To Akabane's convenience, the glass walls had remained intact through the night, shielding Kagami and his exiled fuck buddy from politically sensitive eyes. Prior to this morning, Akabane had not seen their endurance so tested. Kagami... would not normally fall asleep after coupling, and without him escorting Akabane unseen, Akabane could not leave Babylon City peacefully.

"Kagami-kun..." He squeezed the illusionist's shoulder.

"Hnnnuh, it's too early."

Akabane swallowed a playful quip he meant to deliver at Kagami for falling asleep. "Not for me. I will need to depart soon."

"Apparently." Kagami threw his arms over his head as though rubber lined their post-coital perimeter, not fragile glass. He stretched his elegant body in a haphazard fashion, dappling every inch of exposed skin with leaf-shaped shadows. "How rude of me. But surely, you should have waken me up before the sun had risen...?"

"That would have been quite rude of _me_," Akabane replied, intently watching Kagami and the Kagami beyond him, that double image cast in the reflective glass, limbs woven in the shed clothes and crushed ferns, intense greens snarling over long legs, defusing their shape. "Instead, I lay awake contemplating the reason why this has happened. Why you granted yourself the luxury people like us attribute only to the ordinary people and their ordinary lovers... to fall asleep. They do not couple with their mortal enemies, as you have just done."

Kagami answered as though doing so were a chore. "Because... if anything happened to me, the mirrors would break, and people would see you up here." He rubbed his eyes with the desire to go straight back to sleep, in a way that made Akabane want to cut him.

"That is the most obvious reason. However, this was not the first time you escorted me up here for carnal pleasure, Kagami-kun. From what I understand, you were attracted to such practices because of the risk involved. Our first time happened after a battle. You cried then. I thought I would never see you again after that." Akabane smirked at Kagami's tense glare. "Nevertheless, I saw you again. If you had chosen to avoid me, you would have. We fought again and the same thing happened. Our fights evolved into games taking place high over the city. No matter how badly I cut you, you would return, like addicted to the pain. And then a few months ago, the game changed. You would lure me with the pretense of fighting, only to drop your weapons and undress me in the unlikeliest of locations... a church, a movie theatre, a stranger's jacuzzi, a pet shop, a mannequin factory, the vehicle of Midou Ban and Amano Ginji as it was towed, and finally to Babylon City, where your mirrors have kept all the world ignorant of your strange perversion. You took a break from all of this when Lady Poison's seventeenth birthday arrived and you left to help her, only to return to your old habits after you've accomplished your mission. How very interesting, Kagami-kun. Very interesting indeed."

Kagami examined the roots of the closest shrub. "What are you trying to say?"

Akabane pressed on. "Have you become bored, Kagami-kun? Sometimes I wonder, for my own convenience, how long it will take before you deliberately drop the mirrors just to raise a commotion in a heavily-populated area... such as this park on the very day Babylon City celebrates its anniversary. Sometimes I wonder, for my own pride, whether you actually expect me to tear down the mirrors one of these days, for I am not one who wishes to disappoint. And sometimes I wonder, for my own amusement, whether you even care if you get caught sleeping with the forbidden fruit in this carefully constructed Garden of Eden. Are you less concerned with who you're with than where you are and what happens afterwards? Tell me, Kagami-kun, what it is that you want."

Slim eyes watched Akabane without blinking. "I can't believe this. Of all people... I did not imagine ever waking up next to you and being bombarded with such questions." Kagami shook his head, and his eyes darted to the right. "From women, maybe, asking me what I want and telling me what they want when I have no interest in any of that. But not you. Why over-analyze such things that have little importance?"

With a single motion, Akabane produced scalpels poised at Kagami's throat. "You dare speak condescendingly," he said in a cool voice. "It's very like you to hover about the truth without actually engaging in it." The tip of a blade dipped beneath taut skin, and a crimson bead broke from a crisp line. It was the first time Akabane cut Kagami in months, but it drew no flinch from its victim. Within a few breaths, Akabane eased the pressure. "How accusing of me. Perhaps you're just in denial. How about I give you what you won't admit to wanting? Go on, Kagami-kun. Break the mirrors. Break the mirrors or I'll do it for you." Akabane gazed down at the prone man, his pale hair tousled chaotically among the twigs and leaves, smudges of dirt smeared across his cheek from their aggressive love-making in the night. In contrast to their earliest battles, however, Kagami's cool eyes did not contain the expression of a cornered beast resisting capture. He was completely unreadable, although a recent memory materialized in Akabane's mind. The night they coupled in a pet store, Kagami, in the throes of passion, accidentally kicked a cage door open. When they were done, Akabane turned to notice that a kitten poised, half outside the cage, half inside, undecided where it belonged. Its behaviour shamefully undermined the sharp, feral look in its eyes: a wild spirit tainted by domestication. Never had Akabane expected to recollect that memory in relation to Kagami.

When Kagami finally smirked, Akabane knew there was no retracting his threat. The illusionist always had a subtle manner about him, though not in the cowardly manner of avoiding direct confrontation. He loved to taunt, lace his clues with butter, and watch his victims slip all over his red herrings. The man was too artful to remain interested in direct honesty.

Akabane reached the end of his patience. With a flick of his wrist, Akabane send the scalpels into the nearest mirror and the sounds of the park-- noises of celebration bleeding into startled gasps and screams-- rushed into his ears amongst the chiming glass.

* * *

_To fall through a subway grate... what were the odds?_ It was almost, as Kagenuma would have boasted, _Fate_.

As the flimsy grid gave out, Kagami kicked it away with a resounding clang he barely heard. He watched the darkness swallow him like a whale. All the world's music had changed. The busy intersection floated away and a new overture rushed over his head in the form of roaring metal. A rail slammed midway between his toes and heels and his arms swung out for balance, the darkness thinning between his outstretched fingers. Rats scurried for cover, their shadows flickering like flames over pebbles and trash as light peeled through the black. In a panic, Kagami leaped off the rail and hung from the roof of the tunnel. Warmth spread over his cheekbones when he saw an upside-down train passing along the tracks in the opposite side. His heart felt ready to drop out his slack-jawed mouth.

Waiting for him on the tracks was his quarry of the chase: Akabane. He had even caught the grate and shut it on the way down. Distant sunlight filtered upon him in the form of perfect squares. "Are you chasing? Being chased? Leading me astray? Forgive me, Kagami-kun, for I cannot decide," he said, readjusting his wide-brimmed hat with the tips of his gloved fingers. "I break the glass windows and run from the City. In the interest of your reputation, you hastily dress and pursue me for a glorious battle for all to see. And yet I escape despite the odds stacked against me, and we end up alone once again, deep in the bowels of the city's underworld. Why... Kagami-kun?" Scalpel tips emerged between his fingers, but Kagami took the initiative. Glass shards splintered over concrete, and it was Akabane who dodged.

"Are you not interested in an even match?" Kagami dropped from the ceiling in the anticipation of a counter-attack, the tails of his jacket billowing in the draft. Before his eyes, the black blur of his enemy solidified into a silhouette. Chrome lines spread toward him. Kagami crouched, watching sparks fly from the closest beam. "This is far more satisfying, don't you think?" He watched the slim shape before him, waiting, taunting in his smug expression, in hopes that sooner or later, his rival would concede to the brandishing of Bloody Sword. Instead, Akabane continued to speak.

"How exquisitely baffling. To fight with each other like this, it made us both feel alive, charged. But time and repetition turned it into a mere game. And from that mere game, a ritual was born. You had lured me into the Castle where your people could watch us clash from above. They televised us for all your neighbours to see as an example to all of them... so that they will not become exiled one day, like me, or risk punishment and public ridicule in the event of defeat." Through the slit in the hat, Akabane's eye offered Kagami an expression that he was more used to giving than receiving. To have it mirrored back at him... it made his hair rise in a way that was not necessarily unpleasant. While his mouth formed the questions, his gaze contained the knowledge behind the answer. Would it be mirrored on Kagami's lips? Would he admit? That was the challenge. "You liked to be seen, Kagami-kun. But you stopped fighting me for months. And finally today, when forced into it, you did not cut a single slit in my coat through all of Babylon City and the levels below. And now we fight where no eyes land."

"Why are you so confused? You forget that I operate on my own terms. Loyalty, obedience, those are all false surfaces of a Babylonian. Surely, coming from up there yourself, you would know that." Kagami thought he caught a subtle change in Akabane's face, but a mere shadow had passed over the grate above.

"So it is not your agenda with the City that has changed. It has gone beyond that."

Pale lips drew even. Kagami's silence told them both what they needed to know. Having grown up in Babylon City, the two rivals shared the same knowledge that sucked the mystery out of playful banter. Akabane had entered familiar territory that was explored by everything on a daily basis-- their thoughts, their dreams, their emotions-- everything but their words. Forbidden words shot meaning into the vulnerable airspaces, made otherwise pristine and predictable by the stern culture that surrounded them. In withholding his roundabout answers, Kagami had granted Akabane his unspoken consent to continue... to pry and invade him in a way he'd never done before, and perhaps to leave pain, like always, before exiting.

"You have become bored with watching." Akabane raised the lip of his hat to stare at Kagami evenly. "There is nothing within the walls of the Infinite Castle that interest people like us. The odd individuals from the outside world sometimes pass through the lower level, and sometimes you condescend to meet them... but every other day of the year, the most interesting things you look forward to are what the most ridiculous trends among your proud, unchallenged people. I gather from watching the City's children that turquoise is the new purple, this decade..."

Kagami's brows knit. Akabane didn't stop.

"Even your wars are ritualized and fake. You create tragic virtual entities and draw in outside aliens using their emotions. You transform their struggles into entertainment and laugh at how big and romantic they feel risking everything for some petty invented cause." Akabane smiled wryly. "But how long until individuals like yourself become bored with watching the same channel, over and over again? How did it make you feel when Lower Town separated and you felt neither disappointment nor elation? Is apathy that beautiful of an emotion, worth preserving by denying yourselves the lives you really want to experience?"

The turn of conversation, and its stubborn resistence to being turned back, told Kagami he wasn't getting Bloody Sword that day.

Akabane's scalpels lowered. "You want out. I will not give you escape from Babylon City, Kagami-kun. Seize it yourself. Is that what you've been conditioned to doing all this time? Living in a world of created realities? Where your neighbours can solve your problems by altering their environment. And by self-delusion. I believe there's a term for that. 'Cop-out.' A cop-out from Life itself. A cop-out from the truth. There is no reflection without light, Kagami-kun. Within that concrete sanctuary of cables and wires, you are useless... to yourself, to your own happiness."

Kagami had not moved nor spoken. Not a motion creased his clothes, even as Akabane began to stalk towards him, lips moving around a wry smile. "But you have dabbled in neither virtual reality nor the occult. Instead, you go where Babylonians refuse to tread: down, sometimes outside, but you're always back in time to watch the next fake war. You aren't satisfied and you seek more. The other citizens call themselves elite because they place so much value on what separates themselves from other people, trapping themselves with their own strict rules to preserve this mythic differentiation. Time, evolution, moves on, leaving them behind. There are many Babylon Cities in this world. They do not last. You have grown up among insecure, pathetic people, Kagami-kun. But I can see you resisting those bonds now, as I have, years ago. Why biologically engineer creatures of substance, only to seal them away from the world in which they may thrive?"

Akabane smiled. His words had punctured a hymen and the truth bled all over Kagami's spotless life. "You want a challenge? You've been living in the wrong place all these years." Around the corner, several tons of steel and its living cargo rattled along the rails. Kagami never watched subway trains very much in his life, but he never forgot the drab expressions through the oil-streaked windows: blank faces bored of existing... stiff figures afraid of touching their neighbours... sleep-deprived eyes lowered into shiny magazines, where a more interesting life existed below neat little captions. If it weren't for the people's mundane appearances, they would have looked strikingly familiar. The thundering bulk ate up the track. As the curved rail flung the train straight toward them, a mechanical blare of warning mowed their voices into nothing. But Kagami read Akabane's lips as they were.

_Leave them_.

* * *

The crash was loud. It was rather uncharacteristic of Lady Poison to be throwing things.

"I swear, that's why I'm here," Kagami said imploringly, while Mr. No-Brake leaned out his window to examine the damage to the side of his truck. Fortunately, it was just an empty bottle.

"No. _No_. Doctor Jackal, he is _not_ joining us."

"But it amuses me so, Lady Poison. Despite his talents, Kagami-kun has not needed to work a day in his life. I cannot wait to see him performing a real job with true professionals."

Lady Poison glared at Doctor Jackal. Doctor Jackal smiled at Lady Poison. Their new recruit looked between the two. If tension had a colour, it would have been violet.

Mr. No-Brake cleared his throat. "So," said the steadfast trucker to the three standing by the road. "What will be the code name for this poor schmuck?"


	2. The Virtue of Narcissism

Horsehair bristles dusted over moist skin, depositing loosened particles. Smoky pigment lined the crisp fold of the eye, settling between each individual lash. The brush blended outwards, softening bold accent into dusky skin. The socket became a crucible of shadow and light, of pigments manipulated in a way that emphasized the eyelid's natural shape. Quivering lashes fought for stillness, unaccustomed to the attentions of a mascara wand.

_Look up_, he whispered.

And so her violet eyes looked up. They traced the ceiling of the deserted department store, rigid walls reverberating nothing in the solitude that followed closing hours-- not even lips that threaded terse words into the fragile calm, nor the glide of the mascara wand only her nerve endings could hear.

* * *

As she dipped her hands into the grungy water compensated by its sparkling blue container, Himiko realized she never appreciated the concept of tossing change into public fountains. Nothing replaced the dogged determination in the pursuit of one's personal goals. Unless she was a street peddler living day by day, hard work and true sacrifice was not found in a meager coin, one which would not have been missed at the bottom of one's piggy bank. Great accomplishments did not merely fall into someone's lap following a tossed yen and a satisfying splash.

Or an engagement ring, for that matter.

"Found it," she announced to Kagami with contained enthusiasm. He ghosted to her side and looked over her shoulder at the submerged coins. The surface ripples calmed, freeing the pockets of light it once trapped within its folds, and became transparent. They saw a gold loop trapped a chiseled diamond. The rock glittered among the dull coins scattered by her submerged arm. "Exactly where he said it would be. Lucky for him it's still here."

Kagami's response contained a shrug. "Rich man, to toss a ring into the fountain. But it's just a rock without the woman. Three guesses as to what he was wishing for."

"I'm not here to ponder the personal lives of our clients. I'm just here to do the job." Himiko shook the water from her hand and straightened, stepping back onto the floor. Her hands lifted the shirt away from her rolling hips, and slipped the ring into a hidden pouch. She turned to him. "And this is as about as exciting as it'll get tonight. We transport the ring to the man as contracted and receive our payment. I don't see what makes it so worth your while to desert Babylon City so you could transform my life into living Hell."

Kagami rose off the side of the fountain, backlit by the weak glow of the fountain. The light fell against the angle of his jawline, slanting towards her. "I do." His lips moved into a smile. With a sly look that promised elaboration by the end of the night, Kagami stalked off to acquire some new clothes. As the two had discussed within the truck, his current attire would soon prove ill-suited for traveling, and their visit to the mall served a secondary convenient purpose of remedying that problem. Flanking him, Himiko stole a glimpse at his face through the dark. Her eyes met unreadable sockets bearing shadows beneath finely groomed brows. They seemed empty, lacking of promise-- merely false guises of all the personalities she believed existed within Kagami Kyoji.

_You're just going to go steal them?_ Himiko had asked earlier.

_Himiko, you've worked as a thief before_, he replied.

_I was contracted_-- she began, but never finished, halted at the sight of Kagami mouthing her words with his own.

From Kagami, her eyes wandered and spied her composed self walking alongside the illusionist, stiff and emotionless in the reflection of the store displays they passed. The glass offered her the image she approved of: Lady Poison the mature, responsible professional that knew a life of independence, an identity shaped by her upbringing. Her business lacked all shades of gray. Once she accepted a contract, she would do everything in her ability to complete it with all conditions satisfied. She fought what battles lay in the way without fail, for to fail was to puncture the veneer that was Lady Poison. Each layer removed brought her closer to the Voodoo Child, a stranger in her comfortable world of black and white, a stranger that confused and scared her.

A store facade bent away from Kagami's hand, like glass that could not decide whether it was solid and liquid until they had already passed through. From knee to eye level, boxes covered two walls like a grid, stuffed with dark folds of varying intensities. Promotional signage denoted gendered spaces. Kagami stepped into the appropriate section. "If I'm not mistaken, the more you wear these, the better they look. Quite frankly, I'm tired of drycleaning." For all his flippant talk, Kagami leaned over to examine cuts and stitching detail.

Himiko passed her fingertips over some sandblasted material, although the waif-like mannequins in the window had already answered her tactile question. "Jeans? They're all the same. Just pick a few and let's go. Kagami--" The sound of the zipper deflected Himiko's gaze to elsewhere in the store. Her ears completed the missing picture: the sound of tailored garment swishing away in dignified retreat, followed by the struggle of firm flesh intruding a virgin garment designed to fit tightly. Curiosity drew her eyes back. Dark-washed denim rode up his long legs, hugging his hips and ass in a low-rise cut.

"They look great," she said tersely, turning her shoulder to the sight. "Now you look like a normal human being, not a custom-made monster regurgitated from a technologically advanced city of psychopaths posing as gods."

In the process of rotating his hips in the nearest mirror, Kagami paused. Blonde forelocks fell over the sockets that turned her way. His voice was a smile through the dark. "Look through your own world, Himiko, at the entities that control you. You know next to nothing about my people. First examine the monsters that exist in your life, as accessible and yet invisible as a pair of jeans in a sea of people." His hand dipped into a cubicle, rescuing another garment from the masses.

Himiko did not stop to contemplate Kagami's words until she seated herself in the window display. She passed the time beneath a ghostly mannequin, waiting for her stylish companion to through jeans like discarded lovers. Her mind roamed. Without thinking, she had plucked a random shirt off the display, and the price tag crisply pricked her arm. Her nose wrinkled at the three-digit retail value that preceded the decimal. For a moment, she forgot that it was Kagami who was stealing from the store and not the other way around. The dim light drew out letters printed on cloth label. They told of a country whose pronunciation escaped her tongue. Small human hands, not machines, had touched that shirt before she had.

"What do you think of these?" Kagami purred. He turned. Strategically-placed fades marked the hipbones just where they hit beneath the waistband. The stitching lines traced the natural planes of his anatomy, as though the garment were a intimate extension of his body. It was as if Kagami's confessions of self-love were woven into the seams of his jeans. Kagami smiled, for her eyes had answered his question. "Well, they seem to work. I only hope one day you'll fall in love with me, not how sexily I wear my clothes."

Indignation leapt out her throat. "I don't go for superficial creeps."

For a moment, Himiko hated the clothing designer that wrapped human desire around blue-dyed cloth, enticing her imagination to fancy, of all people, Kagami Kyoji-- for touching upon her animal desires and luring her eyes around his nether-regions. It taunted her like another enemy. She saw the corporation like the monster that hijacked her desires, thriving with the hollow heart of a CEO with cash for blood, and human labour and brains for muscle. "But at least you enslave virtual people and not real children around the world," Himiko added as an afterthought, her voice heavy in the silence. "I think one of your 'monsters' has come to mind."

Kagami joined her at the front of the store, looking as casual as any random young man she might meet on the street. His jacket hung from a sign like a dead swan. His shirt hung unbuttoned, strong and solid in its colour against the smooth tone of his skin. "Has your mind been wandering without me today, Lady Poison?"

"Infinite Castle is just a bubble compared to what's happening around us. At least your sad little hackers can't touch cultures that choose not to revolve their lives around technology."

"And even if they did, they would only hit societies containing people who've already been defeated by themselves," Kagami continued. "Helpless individuals who cannot survive, whether it be emotionally or physically, without their technology. Some accomplishment that is. Your heart seems to ache for the children working for pennies a day, but do not feel so smug. Think about the people around you who choose to live in the image of life rather than life itself. Corporations wrap sentimentality around inanimate objects because people actually buy them and grow attached. When they lose them, their heart aches for their return. They weep for these expired moments of the past."

"No wonder the Get Backers can stay in business for so long."

"And yourself, so dedicated to complete your work by-the-contract, leaving your employer to deal with all the gray areas so you can rest easy as Lady Poison? You're a mere extension of what these 'monsters' do, following orders and without questions."

"And yourself, as an extension of Babylon City? When you followed orders from both above and below, backstabbing everyone with your smile intact?"

"It's called being a hypocrite without an ounce of shame, Himiko. Learn to live beyond the boundaries people arbitrarily place on you. Corporations have created the very type of weak people that rely so much on technology, the same people who created it. The Infinite Castle was born from this. It is an escape from the unpredictable realities into a haven of predictable outcomes, where fate is determined through binary code, and whatever flavour of the month happens to drop in as a variable from the outside world. I got bored of observing life in this giant laboratory because I know I can live anywhere I wanted, so I left, with a little push from Akabane." He smirked. "Shades of gray. That's what real people are made of. Is Lady Poison just a signature on the dotted line? Let me get to know you, Himiko."

Long fingers traced the slopes of her face. Himiko abruptly backed up and a mannequin came crashing upon her, her face obscured by the wig of fake hair.

* * *

Bristles sighed over the curve of her cheek, drawing warmth to the surface of her skin. Was it the pigment or natural blushing? It was extremely hard to tell. Why did Lady Poison have to blush? Why the shame?

Do not blush so, Lady Poison.

* * *

A steady downpour thrummed water onto their heads as they approached the entrance to their client's house. Sheets of rain rattled down the long glass panes, and a depression in the courtyard soaked their feet through their shoes. Himiko found the doorbell and was glad to press it, for no amount of knocking upon the aged oak door may trickle through the relentless pounding the storm drove into the windows.

Nevertheless, they waited, while the rain flogged on. Himiko blinked water out of her eye and threw an uneasy glance upward, reassured a moment later by the yellow glow filling a room on the second floor. Beside her, Kagami gave his bangs a light toss. The rain matted his hair to his head and his clothes to his body. Contrary to her expectations, his white clothes remained tucked in the bend of his elbow instead of held over his head. He had chosen to join her in the rain, soaked like an stray cat, but looking beautiful all the same. He stood as silent as the mannequin in the store, yet he reminded her of his words.

_Physical attraction combined with a certain attitude drives away the sort of people I don't want around me_, he'd said.

For the first time, Himiko realized that while most people carried facades as shields, Kagami employed them as filters: transparent like glass, transparent, yet still a boundary. The obstacle repelled most people but drew in a select few. Somewhere during a debate varying qualities of jeans, Himiko had accused Kagami of being superficial for what must have been the fifth time that night. That must have broken the straw on the camel's back, for in reply, Kagami drove the Inner Beauty concept into the ground. He explained how the desire to gain acceptance had perverted the once-encouraging possibility that there rests a warm heart within unattractive people.

_So when you meet an attractive person who takes great pride in his appearance, do you just not bother to dig?_

Intimidated by the good looks of others, insecure people had associated shame with the natural process of good-grooming, while instilling pride in their refusal to preen. They knew only how to resist, not celebrate their own bodies. None of those people could ever get past the 'Man of Mystery' filter and find out who Kagami really was. Each individual is so complex that there are no such thing as shallow human beings, yet people only make them superficial in their own minds to legitimize their self-comforting beliefs.

Boring her eyes into the grain of the doorway, Himiko tried not to think of the few times she met confusion when contemplating her appearance and femininity, drawn and repelled at the same time.

Kagami's groomed appearance emphasized his self-love, but on the other hand, Kagami did not run from himself. He then pointed out the irony of the code name Lady Poison, for was poison not the substance that kills by inhibiting crucial enzymes, basically suffocating them? Himiko had created this second identity to cover up the Voodoo Child mystery that had shadowed most of her life, stifling whatever urges that did not conform to her ideal self.

"Perhaps we should give that doorbell another push," Kagami removed Himiko from her thoughts.

When the door opened, the stepped from one storm into the next. Their client, Kobayashi, beckoned them inside with a distracted mutter while a woman loomed the stairwell like a vengeful ghost. As soon as the door shut out the world, the couple filled every square inch of that mansion with cruel echoes of argument, clashing with no regard to the two transporters that occupied a corner of their domestic battle ground. Himiko stood composed, but no amount of her treasured professionalism rubbed off on the man and woman that raged like beasts. She held out the ring for the client to take. The man seemed to see the tentative motion of her rain-drenched arm in the corner of his gaze, and the light of the hallway shone in the corners of his eyes. He didn't turn. His words lanced across the room with no pause.

Himiko dropped her hand, the diamond reciting its visual poetry in the ugliness of the room. As the barbed insults rung over her head, she awkwardly stared at the rock in her hand that was supposed to celebrate love. Just how compatible were those two?

* * *

The tube opened with a soft pop. With each spiral came the scent of roses, captured in a single waxy stick. It smoothed colour in broad strokes, staining lips with that same intense glow that accompanied sexual arousal.

Perfect shade. It disappeared on her lips so well one cannot tell she is wearing it.

* * *

Kagami tilted his head to guide the rainwater out of his eyes, as silent as a rock in the midst of a crashing river. His eyes fell upon Himiko's extended arm, and the offering that went ignored at the tip of her hand. The engagement ring shone brilliantly, and he found himself wondering if Himiko had ever seriously contemplate if he were the right kind of guy for her.

If she had, she may be filtered out.

In search for belonging, the weak had the tendency to only seek out people who showed strength in certain areas, usually in areas where the seeker was weak. Kagami preferred to attract lovers of strength, in which he saw aspects of his own strength. He did not subscribe to the belief that opposites attracted each other for reasons any deeper than the quest for excitement and novelty. Kagami met many potential lovers that admired him for qualities they themselves did not possess because they were too afraid to seek it, and settled instead to merely sleep beside those qualities every night. Those people were not for him.

He squinted his eyes at the smashing of fragile objects, resisting the urge to tell Kobayashi that the woman realized he reminded her of herself, and that there was no use salvaging the relationship among the broken bits of china. He'd been in the house for a slow two minutes, and their insults had already given away the end of their romance story. Weak as she is, she will fall in love with a man who can compensate for her failings, someone who can fill in the gaps she's missing and lick her battle wounds, even when too much licking slows down the healing process. Their dynamic is predictable and tedious, but this predictability is what comforts them. They are strong when united, but only when united.

The strong remain so, even when alone. Kagami reached toward that glittering rock and cupped Himiko's hand in his own. She startled, gave him a sideways glare, and removed his hand. The expression made him smile. Himiko was still so young, confused, but contained the sort of inner strength Kagami was not used to seeing in people around him. In fear, she may have invented Lady Poison for herself, but she filled the role nicely. She possessed the very substance to become this tenacious, professional Lady Poison, if that was what she wanted. In contrast, most facades were lies, the result of people desperately wanting to become what they were not.

He could not imagine Himiko dissolving into emotional fits, crumbling under the memories of people who left her world. She scabbed over her losses with revenge, grim and determined. He saw Himiko riding the highways on her motorcycle, drifting to new worlds and new people, with no need to cling to one specific place she called home. Kagami could understand. He left Infinite Castle because he was not content with mere survival. Proud of every inch of who he was, he could not conform to the suffocating culture and submit to the pressure to become something he was not, simply to blend in with the people who surrounded him. He chose an adventurous life without shame and with no regrets. Would Himiko travel the world with him, watching the scenery and seaons change, crossing invisible borders defined by the beliefs in people's heads? Through the process, would they be sucked in by whatever dominant religion that happened to settle among the masses there and assimilate? He hoped not. Beliefs may hold people together, but he did not leave Babylon City, and their false gods, to be tied to someone else.

Through history, countries invaded, resisted, and destroyed, only to enslave their people in rigid hierarchies afterwards. He lost count of how many times he'd looked into someone's eyes and watch the micro-model of history repeating itself: alter-egos usurping an expired one in a never-ending sequels, and the true self is never celebrated, oppressed under all the fears kept in place, nurtured and reinforced by the people the individual chooses to surround himself with. Brushing aside soaked bangs, Kagami sought Himiko's gaze, but it had turned away, seeking shelter from the storm in a darkened corner of potted plants while Kobayashi loudly lamented his loneliness.

Kagami also lost count of how many times he'd observed a person claim loneliness despite being in a crowd. Those who seldom felt alone wherever they traveled were the individuals that attracted Kagami. Like eagles, they drifted carefree and proud, surrounded with the possibility of meeting a world full of strangers who would rather embrace the true strength within each other… and not merely look for the completion of their personal jigsaw puzzle. Despite his reputation for a man that knew more than everyone else, Kagami thrived, self-absorbed in the unknown, while others fought for security and comfort, clinging to their tight flocks, terrified if a piece of the jigsaw puzzle disappears from their lives, fighting like crabs if one makes a move for the top of the bucket.

"--But you _complete_ me." Kobayashi decided to try the famous line that masses just adored.

Kagami winced and touched Himiko's shoulder. "Let's go and collect our payment tomorrow," he said. "We'll keep the ring until then."

* * *

Dawn bled over the horizon and granted Himiko a look at her face in the morning glow. A maelstrom of uneasy feelings coiled in her gut, brewing there in apprehensive silence since the moment she gave Kagami permission to give her a makeover, and with it, her promise that she would not steal a glance in the mirror until he was done. She did not expect relief to meet her in the looking glass. "I... look like I have hardly anything on." The mess of the cosmetics counter could not possibly have resulted in such a natural-looking face. Sets of brushes lay open like an opened crayon packet in the midst of a nursery school floor. Glittery powder greedily caught what light fanned in from the window. Jars upon jars of moisturizers sat in disarray beside their sealed and orderly neighbours, like soldiers of mutiny. Plastic sheets kept Himiko's body clean from the pigmented debris, a cocoon of her metamorphosis.

But the butterfly looked no different from the caterpillar.

The first murmurs of the morning rush hour penetrated the store, muffling Kagami's whispered reply, but Himiko thought she heard it for what it was. _Were you expecting Lady Poison?_ The blonde man had risen to retrieve a box of tissue paper and a tube of cold cream makeup remover. Like strips of test paint, different shades of rose and plum smudged his hands in the search for the one that matched her lips. "Look closer," he said upon return, taking the mirror from her awkward hands to move it closer to her face. "It would be a shame if makeup was used to conceal. I played with shadow and light, enhancing the natural shapes of your features. It was rather dark as I worked, and I drew out your natural beauty as it would have looked under better lighting."

As Himiko turned her face toward the window, she saw that he spoke the truth. Tiny bits of silica and blush made her face glow as it would have after a fierce battle. Her lips... were flushed, as they sometimes tended to do. The approaching daylight softened the shadows on her face, as though melting them into her skin.

"The sun rises now, but... it was not rising nearly as fast as I yearned it to." Where Kagami's sentence ended, so did the space between their lips. Their union captured a heat rush that caught Himiko by surprise. She did not expect to find such heat, after an entire night of rubbing cold hands together and drying them after the rain.

They did not speak to each other again until after the ring was returned in the morning, and their payment received. The clouds thinned over the city, but still the streets basked in gray. They passed by the same cosmetics shop broken into, hours ago, at Kagami's suggestion, where they sought shelter from the rain, and an activity to pass their idle time. Himiko refused to look at it. She was quickening her pace when Kagami caught her hand.

"Himiko..."

She stopped.

"Does my presence still warrant the smashing of a perfume bottle against the side of Mr. No-Brake's truck?"

* * *

I can't help but to watch you as you sleep tonight, remember your words from yesterday, and can only think of what Akabane had told me shortly before you joined us.

Some time within the past few decades, the false gods within Babylon City realized what they were doing to themselves, hiding away from the world. And so, they tried to create a class of healthy humans with the latest biotechnology, a project of hope. As much as you like looking sexy, you weren't created solely for somebody's wet dream. Where you have good health, you have physical beauty. It was their way of helping evolution along. Who knows what can happen when it comes to genetic mutations-- bringing creatures like you into existence? For all we know, someone like you could have popped out by chance on an unlucky day.

Your meddling gods began to use Lower Town not just solely to amuse themselves, but simply as a virtual ecosystem to see what genetic combinations lived and failed. They extrapolated from ordinary cameras. As technology advances, humans cram in more dots per inch in the pictures, until the naked eye cannot distinguish between the two. They found a way to do this with all five senses, so the tell-tale boundary between reality and virtual fell just beyond the human experience. Someone managed to synthesize human emotion by cracking open a few neuroscience journals and applying the Myers-Briggs test. But inner strength-- perhaps not so different from this Inner Beauty concept you love to mock so much-- is not created in a petri dish.

Even with their efforts, they knew that only a handful would have enough will to escape to the outside world after growing up in a safe shelter. And not only that, never go back... and sometimes I wish you would and seal yourself in an aquarium forever. The stern, rigid culture was a test, Akabane realized. The city is safe and a great place to grow up if you want to educate yourself. At the same time, it gets mind-numbingly boring after a while, just so you can take your sadistic urges out on other people. You asshole.

If I remember correctly, Akabane compared it to a sanctuary of sorts for endangered species like you. Akabane sensed you resisting your boundaries and knew that you would escape to the 'wild' one day. The world's population is getting weaker and weaker as a handful of people invade other countries and buy up all the resources. (And I would hate to see you at a board meeting as a corporate psychopath.) Now I realize what sort of monsters you were referring to. Technology has allowed the weak to live among the strong, tampering with the process of natural selection. The poor are unable fend for themselves, breaking physically and emotionally under the strain of global ... infestation of sorts, driven by the greed for money. People become slaves to it. Digital networks-- the new transporters-- move money in and out of countries indiscriminately, wrecking economies and affecting helpless people that cannot survive without their domestic comforts, adjusted to a life of dependency upon others. People are too tired to think. They toe the line, while I complete my contracts. I don't want to become like them, merely surviving day by day without anything to look forward to. Your false gods probably realized this too. Surrounded by their technology and shunning the outside world, they recognized what was happening and saw they couldn't fix it. They could only try to redeem themselves. In a world of slavery, they tried to create humans that had the best chance of tasting freedom in their lives, these "endangered species."

Even the ones that deserved extinction. Asshole.

After he killed someone who died a little too easily, I remember Akabane mentioning in disappointment that natural selection is no longer only about physical strength. Emotionally, we are losing. As Akabane said to me, perhaps we are all growing a little mad. People are afraid of each other. They've stopped taking risks. They live isolated lives. They create alter-egos, taking them a little too seriously. They neglect their flesh and blood. They throw change in public fountains. Perhaps what we call the meaning of life-- Enlightenment, Nirvana, or the Great Whatever of your beliefs-- is not something that religion or even other people can hand to you. Unfortunately, we have too many people in the world staring at their own flaws or following old traditions and not enough people actively searching for it.

And perhaps Babylon City wasn't aiming to create perfect humans. As rational scientists, they'd know that evolution is a process. Akabane told me the process of life is what makes it worth living, not the end result or any captured moment to be preserved and hidden away. Moments are to be lived as they happen. Expired moments are not to be carried around in our pockets to light our fires on cold, nostalgic nights. They are life's consolation prizes.

Is your surface beauty maintained through self-love, and not the desire to be admired by others? How much of your life do you spend invisible, while the masses ache to be seen, to be heard, throwing themselves in front of cameras and validated by television? A human super-race was not the goal of Babylon City. They recognized that the world was getting too ugly and filled with sadness. They strived to create men and woman capable of loving themselves with their heads held high… because that was where they failed themselves. Even if these people ended up as people like you, killers and self-absorbed obnoxious bastards.

But I'll admit, sometimes I don't mind your narcissism so much if you have the capacity to love someone else. I know you only joined the transporting business so you could get me out of it. Why?

What do you see in the mirror today? Do you see me within yourself? Is that what draws you to me?


	3. The Passion in the Fissures

Quiet solitude would end. The spirited songs emptied into the sky from nature's early risers told Himiko of her failure to avoid yet another sleepless night. The world was nigh, and all its distractions. Its shining sun would cast that vertical yellow crack of the truck's rear door. Day would arrive as a bright sliver in the floor, then slowly creep toward her, slinking like a golden cat over the relaxed form of her companion. Perhaps to goad her into quiet fits of suppressed want, Kagami Kyoji did not intrude on Himiko's personal space at night despite his advances during the day. Nude in a blanket, his flesh carving a smooth triangle in the half-light from shoulder to hip, he slept a modest distance from her. The folds of cloth got all confused and excited around his long legs. Every morning appointed Himiko the privilege of having to smack the blonde awake, sometimes several times, for the man seemed to have grown up ignorant of the alarm clock. Conspiring with her insomnia, that privilege transformed into a chore lately. Moment by moment, she had to watch night yield to day across the lean muscles of his back, and rinse the darkness from his preened pale hair, which only seemed to grow sexier the more it became sleep-tossed. 

Sexier. A few nights ago, Himiko had given in to acknowledging that. It was around the time that the Sandman decided to leave her out of his rounds.

Any moment, Himiko expected Akabane return from his nightly prowls, carrying breakfast along with news of their next contract. She expected their day to begin as usual, rolling along in constant threat of Kagami's seduction techniques, finally snowballing to a night of quaking nerves, while her tormentor slept to carefree dreams. There she lay, terrified of the progress he's made on her. It just wasn't fair. Watching his moonlit flank rise and fall, she wondered... how long. How long until she became just another one of his successful conquests? Should she take to heart all that he's said to her, or will he disappear as soon as he's had his thrills, leaving her incomplete and wanting, like many of those he's frequently mocked? Do his violet eyes study her reactions in careful calibration for his next ruthless move? Does he kiss her lips and taste submission? Are his soothing words a mere diversion while his hips glide near her parted thighs? Each day brings another crack in her walls, chiseled by words that make too much sense, and his face that acts as anchor to her wandering gaze. He had even the _audacity_ of coaxing dirty thoughts into her head.

Himiko experienced the ill misfortune of laying eyes on a cucumber in a busy marketplace, haunted by thoughts of him. Right then, the universe of men and women blurred into the oblivion, and she was left only with herself and that obscene thought, alone beneath the infinite sky and that sea of sounds, where no clamour could distract her from herself. She vowed revenge.

She left that marketplace with the cucumber in her hand.

Under her blanket, Himiko grasped the vegetable she entrusted to the racing beat of her heart, tucked tightly against the rhythm of life, the sound of blood pounding harder and harder with each new chapter of her mental torment. Surely, it would be well prepared for its fate. On shaking limbs, Himiko rose on the floor of the truck's hollow body. Gravity snaked the blanket off her shoulders. Despite the presence of Kagami, she remained true to her habit of sleeping nude for the integrity of her carefully fitted clothes. This necessity only contributed to her mental disturbance. She threw one last wide-eyed glance in the direction of the truck doors, gaze strangely unfocused. Those faithful doors stood silent and true, boxing morning out and her intentions within, secretive, coiling, ready to strike. Cucumber between her teeth, Himiko approached the sleeping Kagami on hands and knees. Cold fingertips took the edge of Kagami's blanket. Through the lashes of her narrowed eyes, Himiko watched as that masculine body stirred in the draft. An earring rattled a song of dissonance against the floor, but it did not wake him. Himiko held the cucumber in her hand as if it were a dagger. The teeth gritted within her tightening lips, her pulse drumming a tribal dance as a war cry gathered in her throat.

"W-wake up... you scum of the earth," she hissed, the tips of her teeth banging together. Kagami blindly retrieved his blanket. It was the same thing she said every morning. Himiko jerked the blanket away. She swung an open palm against his bare ass to wake him up, earning a startled jerk from her unsuspecting victim.

She rammed the cucumber up his opening.

Morning arrived with a scream. Routine, expectations, professionalism... they all fell away in pieces, and hammered into place declared a moment-- a moment that Himiko seized for herself, no longer satisfied with mere cowering in the dark, waiting for that moment to loom upon her like a bad dream, passive and powerless to stop it. She saw that moment reflected in the backs of Kagami's eyes, stretched wide in shock and fear. That moment swelled through his lungs and emptied into the void bowels of the truck. She controlled the storm whose eye lay between her fingers. Cool, like... a cucumber.

That moment ended when Kagami's scream melted into an unbelievably silky moan, when he writhed sensuously out of his rigid composure, and when his eyes caught the hungry look of reality staring at him from above.

* * *

The plastic bag swung in Akabane's fastidiously gloved hand, protecting morsels of sushi from the elements. Warm rays poured on his face, and if they had any say among the chemicals in his head, they proclaimed the day to be a cheery one. A dainty smile emerged beneath his generous hat. No amount of sunshine could match the anticipation of amusement, particularly if it involved the misery of others. The grass crushed moist beneath his boots, which alternated steps with asphalt. Butterflies sowed hurricanes between their wings for future harvest. Rounding the bend in the road, Akabane lightened his steps and cocked his head. Morning regularly granted him the pleasure of hearing that satisfying smack, delivered without fail from his seasoned co-worker to the new recruit.

As he walked, the terrain gradually slid the truck to his assessment. The back end of it appeared to be shaking. Akabane's smile fell. As he neared, he noticed Mr. No-Brake in the driver's seat, hunched over. The trucker apparently decided early on that he would rather ignore the rest of the universe that day, his face buried within one of Kagami's fashion magazines. Apparently, models looked sexier upside-down. Akabane's sushi fell.

White digits seized handles of the back door. Sunlight drenched into the mystery boxed within. The sight hit Akabane like a bucket of cold water. Sweat beaded off the pores of Himiko's dusky skin, reflecting like gems in the bright invasive morning he so rudely escorted into her private space. Her eyes wore the look of trance, but one of nothing more but pure pleasure, sealing every so often with raw-throated gasps. She rode Kagami facing away from him, their legs spread and straining against the moist metal of the compartment. Akabane questioned reality when he looked to her hands. He tightened his hand upon the handle of the door, faced with deceptively simple options that were not quite so simple in their execution or consequence. Would he preserve Lady Poison's dignity by quietly shutting the door, trusting her to ignore the blatant slap of sunlight across the back of her retinas? Should he, as a gentleman, discreetly place their breakfasts on the floor before departing, without disturbing their intimate air with his lips? Or are words of apology to be graced upon unreceptive ears, spellbound by the sounds of their own estcasy? Would Himiko resent him, having seen?

Throwing her head back with the strained suppression of a cry, she squinted her eyes open, looked to the light, and locked eyes with him. Akabane watched her body freeze into place, her gaze piercing an unreadable in the glare. Then gradually, ever _so_ gradually, her moist body began to move again, hips pumping against Kagami's slender loins, her hands slowly working that prop in and out of his opening. She swayed like a cat on a branch caught in a hurricane, with no notion of death. Liberated moans shot into the air, as if relieved they escaped the need for secrecy. It was as if business merely... went on for the two of them.

Arriving at a decision, Akabane closed the door, trench coat swishing against the cool flat floor. Like a predator stalking the perimeter of a campfire, he observed that beautiful union at all angles before relocating himself beside the writhing blonde. He swept a glove-tipped finger through a streak of sweat and tasted it. Gently tossing his hat to the corner, Akabane smiled into those fox-like eyes, narrowed to slits of hunger and craft. He peeled off a glove, laying a warm hand against Kagami's cheek where it was clasped and held, before sensually guided down the soft cords and hollows of that throbbing throat. A particularly sharp thrust from Himiko made Kagami arch, releasing a brittle whimper that teased the small hairs along Akabane's spine. The last glove hit the floor, nipped away by a salivating smile. Akabane consumed Kagami's mouth with unbridled aggression, slender hands raking through silky fronds of hair, strong arms taking the blonde's body in a delicate headlock of dominance, tips of nails tracing chest and throat in sensual play of want... the want of what Lady Poison had so unexpectedly taken from him at the other end of Kagami's svelte body.

Oh, those early birds...


End file.
